Air Lift LoadLifter 5000 Air Helper Springs - Rear Axle

Video Transcript for Air Lift LoadLifter 5000 Air Helper Springs Installation - 2015 Ram 2500

Today on our 2015 Ram 2500, we're going to take a look at and also show you how to install the Airlift Load Lifter 5000 Air Helper Springs. These are designed for the rear axle. The part number is AL57280. Here's what our airbags look like installed. As you can see they've completely replaced that factory jounce bumper. This is going to give us a lot more support back here on the rear end. It's also going to soften it up so when we do have a heavy load on, that jounce bumper isn't constantly hitting the axle.

Now the custom brackets on top and bottom are really easy to get installed. We don't have to worry about drilling the frame. We don't have to worry about making any modifications to the vehicle. These are custom-designed for this application, so they're going to bolt right up for us. They're also going to offer a black powder coat finish so they're going to be nice and durable. Now the door inflation valves are going to be really nice for the end-bed style loads.

Once they get offset one side to the other whether it's from just an off-center load of stuff you've put in there or a camper that might have a water tank on one side, we can adjust these individually to bring our truck back to level however we might need to. Now this is the typical situation when we see our customers requesting airbags. We've got a rear-end sagging down. Whether it's from a loaded up pickup truck bed, maybe a fifth-wheeler gooseneck, or even a ball-mounted or a bumper pool style of trailer. Now we've got our truck loaded down with about 200 gallons of water. That's going to be just under the payload capacity for it. We've got a lot of rear end sag, so when we get that sag, we're putting excess pressure on the rear suspension system here.

It's going to cause premature wear and fatigue. As a side effect of that sagging as well, the distance that your suspension can travel is going to be much reduced. That's going to cause a much bumpier and rougher ride. Now when the rear-end goes down, we're taking weight off of the front end. When we reduce the weight that's pressing down on our front tires here, we're going to lose some steering capabilities, some breaking capabilities, which ultimately leads to a worse handling situation or a truck that doesn't handle nearly as well. Also when we lift up on the front end, the steering angle changes, the suspension geometry changes, and that causes excess wear on the outer edge of our tire, which you can see pretty plainly on this tire.

The inside edge of the tires here still has some pretty decent grooves and some pretty decent tread. The outside edge here you can see is worn to where it's almost completely gone. As another side effect of that sagging rear end, your headlight angle's going to go up. That's going to decrease the effectiveness of your headlights. Now here you can really see what a difference air springs will make. We've got the exact same load in our truck that we had before and we've eliminated all of the squatting here in the rear end and all of the rise in the front. This is going to help to alleviate those common problems that we get when we're hauling a heavy load. Now in addition to the load-leveling capabilities, which are really helpful, the airbags, when our truck is unloaded and at the minimum pressure, from reading our customer reviews they have added benefits for just the general overall ride quality of the truck. We're going to have reduced body roll side to side. It's going to soften up the abruptness of the suspension and really leads to just better ride quality. Also something our customers have mentioned, and I think is a really good tip, is when we soften up the contact point back here when we're loaded up. That's going to transfer through to our trailer. So without air springs when we've got that really rough ride, everything inside of whatever we're hauling is feeling that as well. When we put the air springs in and we get that additional suspension inaudible 00:03:45 and we can soften that up, the things in our trailer are going to be kept safer. Now here's a look at our truck loaded down with and without air springs. You can really tell the difference as we start the slalom here. The body roll is going to drastically reduced and the feel inside the car is much smoother. As we get into our big wide sweeping turns, you can see how the airbag is going to keep the truck level, reducing that body roll again. Behind the steering wheel it really feels much more stable and when you turn the wheel it's more responsive. As we get into the bump section, you'll see with the increased suspension travel is really going to smooth out the ride as we head across any uneven surfaces, potholes, anything like that. Now before we begin our installation, we want to note the factory ride height of our truck. We always use the inside edge of the wheel well here. You're just going to measure from the ground and you want to write this down both here in the rear and in the front. Now the first step in our installation's going to be to get the jounce bumper removed. We're going to have a bolt here on the back side. The same place just up here on the front side. We're going to remove those with a 15 millimeter socket. That's going to provide us with the attachment points for our frame bracket. We've got that one there and that one there. I'm going to go on the passenger's side and repeat that same process. Now we can take the frame bracket. It's going to be the one with the largest hole. Position that up so that the large hole is facing out toward our tire. We'll thread in the two longer of the buttonhead bolts there. Then we'll get those torqued to the specifications in the instructions. We want to get both of our airbags set up just as you see this one. This is going to be our driver's side. For our passenger's side, we want it to be a mirror image so we'll start by threading in our swivel fitting there. We want to go hand-tight with this and then a turn and a half further. One and a half. Now we'll bring the roll plate right down over the top and you'll see how the holes in that plate are going to line up with the two holes remaining at the top of the airbag. Now remember we want this to be a reverse of the first one that we did. You'll see two square holes. One's going to be further away from this hole. The other one's a little bit closer. The one that's closer we need to place one of our 3/8ths carriage bolts in. Then we'll bring that down over and line it up with the holes there and use the 3/8ths buttonhead screws to attach it. You see we're putting this in because the roll plate will prevent us from putting that in later. These are the buttonhead screws with the much finer threads and they're going to be shorter than the ones we used with the jounce bumper. Now we can snug our screws down and we're going to torque these to the specifications in our instructions. Now we can turn our attention to our lower brackets. Now these again, just like our uppers, are going to be pretty much carbon copies of one another. We have these large washers that we need to get put in place. These are going to be facing downwards so we're looking at the bottom of the bracket here. You'll see on the side closest to us we've got a square hole and a square hole, but also two round holes. We want our bolts, 3/8ths bolts, to pass up through the bracket the same way those tabs are facing up. Then we place on the large washer, then you want to add on a lug nut, and we're going to tighten both of these down so that they're secure. The same thing on both of them here. Now we can take our long carriage bolts and these are going to come up through the square holes on each side just like that. Each racket's going to get two of them. Now we're going to grab our driver's side spring assembly. To identify that, you want the carriage bolt to be away from you and to the left. That's going to leave the open carriage bolt hole here. Now when we attach the lower bracket to the bottom of the spring, we want that large washer that we installed to be located underneath these square holes here. Our carriage bolt hole locations. So they'll be going together just like that. Don't forget your roll plate and we'll set that on top and just like we did before, we're going to be put our screws in there to attach it. This time we're going to use the flathead holes. Now we're ready to get our flathead's bolts torqued down to the appropriate specifications and we'll repeat the process for our other air spring assembly. Now that we can get our assembly put in place here, the left side, this should be towards the outside of the vehicle and forward. As we do this, we need to bring this rear carriage bolt down in between the break lines and the axle. You may have to compress your bag just slightly. For now we need to get our upper mounting locations taken care of. What we'll do is pass our swivel air fitting through that large hole and then the rear carriage bolt's going to go through that hole. On top of that we want to place one of our 3/8ths flat washers and we're also going to thread on that nylon lug nut. Now on the opposite corner of our air spring, we're going to have the same square hole there and we'll take one of our 3/8ths carriage bolts and pass it up through. We're also going to put a washer in now that we've got out nylon lug nut on it. Now you can see that we've raised our axle up, bringing it closer to the bottom of the truck. That's reduced the distance between the old jounce stop and our upper bracket. You've got these sort of sandwiched together. We're just going to line up our brackets. Then we're going to tighten down our bolts. We're going through the same thing for our forward bolt. Right now we're going to torque down each of our nuts. The one here in the rear you're probably going to use what's called a crow's foot. The one in the front, a short-welled socket should be able to get in there for you. Now with this torqued down properly, let's go do the passenger's side. Right now the next step we need to complete is to get our axle straps put on the bottom side. These just get placed up on our carriage bolts here. Then we're going to secure them just like we did before. Flat washer and then the nylon lug nut. Then we can snug our nuts down here. Now we're going to torque these down to the specifications, which are also found in inaudible 00:11:13 we're just going to do the same thing on the passenger's side. Now something we like to do is just kind of trim these bolts off a little bit. You know, to prevent them from getting hung up or snagged on anything. Now when, we grab our air line, it's going to be one long piece. There's going to be a fitting on each end. We want to go to about the center section. We're going to cut it. Here we're using part number AL10530. Just a quarter inch tubing cutting. You can slide that down in and then just clip it to get these nice flush cuts. Now these can be installed just about anywhere on your vehicle your air lines will reach to. Some people like to put them on either side. In this case, because this plug's here. I'll probably put them side by side here I you chose to go in that location. I like to use the license plate bolt areas where I'll actually be able to bring these through, use them to attach the license plates to the vehicle, and then we'll just have our two air filler nozzles right there. It'll be nice and clean looking. To do that, we remove the plate and we're going to drill these two holes out with a 5/16ths inch bit. Then once we've got these holes drilled out, we'll see these little tabs that stick up in the back. You'll just want to trim those off. They don't have to be exactly flush. They're pretty close to flush with the back side of the bumper there. You don't have a high-speed cut-off tool, you can also use a razor knife. Onto each air line we'll thread on one of the nuts provided with the kit. We're also going to place on serrated lock washers. Luckily these nuts just barely threaded on there. Once we have these pushed through the bumper, we can adjust for the length we want coming through. Then we just take those and place them through just like that. Then we'll take our plate and we're going to put it on there. This is also going to work out if you have any kind of plate frames or anything you want to use. You'll place on one of the rubber washers there. One of the flat washers and then another one of the nuts. This really just has to be hand tight. You just want to compress that washer a little bit and then you've got a cap to go over it. If you've got a little bit of length there, you can adjust it in and out if you want. That's going to be a personal preference thing. Now we want to route each side towards the appropriate airbag. Be careful as you do this not to drag this tubing over any sharp metal. If you create grooves in, it's almost definitely going to leak on you. Our airbag's on the outside of the frame rail there, so at some point you want to pass that over. Then I like to use zip ties to hold it place anywhere I can. You can do it around or hitch here, around this cross member just to keep it up out of the way. You'll notice that underneath here we've got the spare tire removed and we also took down the heat shield and secured it in four locations here. That's really just to make it easier for you. See, you can do most of this with that in place if you choose to, but definitely a little more open if you take them out. Now it's a good idea to keep a little bit of extra air line on each side in case you ever have to make any changes or any kind of adjustments. Just tuck it up there out of the way, and then we'll have it if we need it. Now once we have our air line coming outside of the frame rim, we just need to push it into our elbow fitting. Again, you want to use a tubing cutter or a very sharp razor knife to get a good flush cut on the end. You're going to slide it in. You're going to feel the initial stop and then you're going to want to push it in just a little bit further. Do the same think over of the passenger's side as well. All right, we're going to test out our system. Let's pressurize it. We'll spray down our connections with some soapy water. Not only do we want to check the seam where our air hose goes into the elbow, but also where the elbow goes into the bag. We'll just give that a few minutes to sit and make sure we don't see any new bubbles form. Then we'll be good to go. Now with no leaks detected that's going to complete our installation of the Air Lift Load Lifted 5000 Air Helper Springs for the rear axle, part number AL57289, on our 2015 Ram 2500.